Cape Town - Cricket has always regarded itself superior to many other sporting codes. Perhaps this is due to its British aristocratic birth – a game played by gentlemen and ladies to a certain set of rules, while conforming to another set of rules.
The English language has even adopted the term “it’s just not cricket” to describe anything that may be perceived as neither fair nor impolite.
It is here that cricket now faces another moral dilemma relating to substitutes – or rather, tactical retirements.
According to the ICC rule book, a batter is allowed to retire at any time of the innings when the ball is dead after informing the umpires.
And it’s the highly analysed T20 format that has begun to exploit this ruling.
Although it has occurred occasionally before, it has caught fire over the last few months. The IPL – cricket’s very own Henry Ford – burst open the doors to this phenomenon when Rajasthan Royals all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin, who had scored 28 off 23 balls, was replaced by Riyan Parag.
Despite not having faced a ball or assimilated to the batting surface – often regarded as crucial – the Royals believed Parag had a better chance to find the boundary for the remainder of the innings.
Nobody will ever know what Ashwin may have achieved, but Parag struck two singles and a six before being dismissed for eight runs off four balls.
It was the equivalent of a football manager bringing on a couple of “specialised” penalty-takers ahead of a shootout.
Cricket’s traditionalists may not enjoy watching a batter trudge back to the pavilion without actually being dismissed, but coaches and analysts armed with statistics have come to the conclusion every little advantage counts in matches decided by the barest of margins.
Another T20 craze, labelled as “match-ups”, also plays a definitive role in the tactical retirement of a batter.
This was evident on Sunday during the rain-reduced T20 Blast encounter between the Birmingham Bears and Notts Outlaws at Edgbaston.
The Bears retired – I prefer to use substituted – power-hitter Carlos Brathwaite when the Outlaws called on leg-spinner Calvin Harrison to bowl the final over.
From a naked-eye point of view, it would seem strange to replace Brathwaite, who famously won the T20 World Cup for the West Indies in 2016 by striking England’s Ben Stokes for four consecutive sixes in the final over.
However, Harrison had dominated Brathwaite in an earlier over, and coupled with the West Indian’s poor overall strike-rate against leg spinners, the decision was made to replace him with Sam Hain, who averages 57.50 against the same type of bowler.
Equally, when the game was on the line later in the day – when the Outlaws required three runs for victory off the final delivery – the visitors replaced the non-striker, veteran all-rounder Samit Patel, with a faster runner in Harrison.
Neither decision actually made a difference to the final outcome, with Hain not facing a ball and Harrison only managing a single, but the substitution template has now been firmly set for other teams to follow.
Cricket may well never be the same again.
@ZaahierAdams